8Flight Aviator EFB: A Next-Gen App Finding Its Feet

Electronic flight bag apps have reached a point where the majority of pilots already have a preferred solution. ForeFlight and Garmin Pilot dominate the market partly from years of refinement, deep avionics integration, and workflows shaped by how pilots actually fly, plus for their connectivity with Garmin’s panel avionics. So for pilots happy with their current app, any new EFB might be worth serious consideration only if it brings something different to the table, and from what we hear on a regular basis, subscription pricing and perceived future support are definitely a factor.

The 8Flight Aviator app, with development led by world record-setting pilot Matt Guthmiller, is attempting exactly that, positioning 8Flight Aviator as a next-generation EFB rather than a companion app. Here at AvBrief, we’ve been using the Apple iOS program for over one month, closely evaluating its features, performance, and compatibility. Let’s dig in.

How We Use ‘Em

Like plenty of other pilots, I use EFB programs a lot for preflight planning. And that’s really where the value is. The right app is a hugely capable means of picking the right day to fly based on winds and weather, planning routes that take advantage of tailwinds on long legs, or finding the safest path through the mountains on our trips to places like Telluride, Colorado.

Once airborne, I often put the iPad away because in my glass-panel airplane, the avionics handle most real-time navigation and situational awareness. Still, that equation changes significantly for pilots flying with traditional analog flight instruments, with older GPS units (or no GPS at all), and for renters and flying club members who switch between different planes and avionics. In those aircraft, especially ones with limited avionics capability, an EFB essentially becomes the modern portable electronic flight deck.

I’ve long accepted that when flying through real weather or navigating around convective activity, the EFB still plays a role, but with important limitations. Like any EFB, its usefulness depends on latency, update rate, and understanding what it can—and cannot—be used for. It’s a supplemental source of information, not something to be relied on tactically for weather avoidance, though there are plenty of pilots use them for just that. Worth mentioning is that Starlink in-flight Wi-Fi is changing in-flight weather for the better.

8Flight History, Philosophy

8Flight was built around the idea that flight planning has become increasingly fragmented. Fuel prices, landing fees, airport services, weather, and routing often require pilots to bounce between multiple apps, websites, and phone calls. The goal of 8Flight is to consolidate that information into a single app and present it in a way that’s easier to consume and act on. The team behind 8Flight is small, and work on the app began about 18 months ago.

Since then, updates have been pushed frequently, with the company committing to an aggressive update schedule. That pace is evident throughout the app. Some features feel well thought out and polished, while others are clearly not finished yet. There is a noticeable amount of clunkiness in places that feels like it’s waiting on refinement, reinforcing the sense that this is a platform still very much in development—but moving quickly. Let’s look at the app’s preflighting tools.

Weather

Weather is one of the stronger aspects of 8Flight, particularly for long-range planning. Radar, winds, icing, and turbulence can all be displayed out to six days using forecast models overlaid directly on the map. That makes it easier to visualize how conditions may evolve along a proposed route instead of relying solely on static briefings or nationwide text discussions.

Frankly, I hate reading raw weather discussions across the entire country just to figure out the best day to fly, but it’s often unavoidable when working around tight schedules. 8Flight’s ability to take that same data and present it visually—especially as far out as six days—works very well for identifying viable windows. A good example was a recent Denver-to–New Orleans flight. We had a very limited set of options: Monday, a very early Wednesday-morning departure, or Friday. Forecast models showed convective activity developing into a solid line on Tuesday that would cut the route off from the Dallas region through Little Rock, pushing north and southeast.

The models suggested Tuesday would involve flying through weather, dealing with icing, and then having those conditions persist into early Wednesday afternoon in New Orleans. Using the future radar outlook in 8Flight, it became clear that flying on Monday carried significantly less risk than waiting and trying to fly behind the weather. That forecast verified, and flying earlier turned out to be the right call. This kind of forward-looking visualization is where 8Flight provides real value. 8Flight also advertises that it’s fully compatible with Starlink, with real-time radar at altitude, live AWOS and D-ATIS, and real-time forecasting.

Performance Planning, Weight and Balance

Aircraft performance planning exists in 8Flight, but it isn’t ready yet. There are no prebuilt aircraft profiles, and performance planning relies on manually building your own data. That process isn’t difficult, but it is time-consuming. I copied performance data from Garmin Pilot and ForeFlight to build a quick profile, which works—but it isn’t something we’d want to do for multiple aircraft, and it isn’t particularly refined.

The performance profiles themselves are extremely basic. Users can enter climb, cruise, and descent values for TAS, rate, and fuel flow, but there is no ability to define performance by altitude. In a turbocharged airplane, that matters. Cruise speeds can vary significantly with altitude, and climb performance deteriorates the higher you go for all aircraft. This section needs substantial development before it can be relied upon for meaningful planning.

Weight and balance is in an even earlier state. I wasn’t able to actually run loading scenarios at all. The only thing I could do was enter basic aircraft weight limitations. We were told full weight-and-balance functionality is coming, but as it stands today, it simply isn’t usable. Usability also needs refinement across this section. In several places, it isn’t immediately obvious whether tapping into a data field has worked. There’s no visible cursor or feedback, and you often only know the tap registered once values begin populating. That lack of feedback adds friction and is something that clearly needs polish.

Route and Planning: Head’s up on Fees

Route planning is an area where 8Flight attempts to differentiate itself, though not successfully yet. The route suggester is basic, offering suggested routings without additional context such as aircraft types, commonly flown altitudes, or route recency. Compared to more mature routing tools, I think it feels generic and underdeveloped. SID and STAR selection also feel awkward. I wasn’t able to view procedures on the map and choose one that clearly aligned with the direction of flight. That required local knowledge, opening multiple procedures, or simply not filing one and letting ATC assign it—an obvious area for improvement in an app pushing modern workflows.

Fuel pricing, on the other hand, was very accurate in my testing. I called multiple airports—ranging from small county airport FBOs to FBOs at large Class B airports—and the fuel prices were consistently right on. Airport fees initially appeared just as solid. After calling several airports to verify landing, ramp, and overnight fees, everything checked out. I didn’t find a discrepancy until later, almost by chance, while flying to visit my parents. At their home airport, KCEW, 8Flight listed a $25 overnight fee when the actual fee was $15. Checking turbine aircraft fees revealed additional inaccuracies in overnight parking and ramp charges.

I reached out to 8Flight about the discrepancy, and the explanation was straightforward: The team gathers fee data through a combination of direct phone calls, email outreach, and published FBO information. One challenge, according to the company, is that even FBO staff don’t always provide consistent answers, and aircraft-type categories can vary widely. In some cases, they generalize fees into broader categories to make the data usable across aircraft types.

That context helps explain how inconsistencies can occur. Still, from a pilot’s perspective, confidence in fee data matters. If an app lists a fee that turns out to be lower than reality, that creates friction at the desk. If it lists a fee higher than what you ultimately pay, that’s easier to absorb. At this stage, the presentation of fees is excellent, but the data itself appears to have at least some inaccuracies. For now, airport fees should be treated as a strong planning reference rather than something to rely on without verification.

Airport amenities are also well cataloged, though they don’t significantly influence my planning decisions. I joke that my airplane is basically a minivan on a road trip—we pack it full, bring snacks, meals, and drinks, and blast off. When I’m stopping for fuel, I want cheap fuel, a restroom, and ideally a dog-friendly FBO. Still, seeing which airports have on-field restaurants is a nice touch when you’re in the mood for a $100 hamburger.

Maps, Overlays, Charts

Overlay options are intentionally limited. Traffic, AIRMETs, SIGMETs, NOTAMs, and special-use airspace are available, along with standard weather layers such as radar, satellite, icing, turbulence, clouds, smoke, and winds. The philosophy is to reduce clutter by grouping layers rather than offering extensive customization. I understand the reasoning, but I still prefer more surgical control, even if it means scrolling. I’m not fully sold on this approach yet.

Chart organization, however, is where 8Flight falls down the hardest. At the moment, chart organization is essentially nonexistent. There are no meaningful tools to organize, sequence, or quickly access charts in a way that supports real in-flight use. For an instrument pilot, this is a major limitation. Something needs to change here for 8Flight to be considered a valuable IFR tool.

Charts themselves are standard FAA products with no customization or decluttering options, and they feel clunky. An upcoming update is expected to allow pilots to tap a procedure in the flight plan and pull up the associated taxi, SID, STAR, or approach chart. If implemented well, that could significantly improve usability. Today, I think Garmin Pilot still sets the standard for chart organization, particularly with Smart Charts.

Post-Flight Features, Pricing

Flight tracking is technically an in-flight capability, but it’s also a necessary building block for post-flight and logbook automation. 8Flight supports flight track logging and auto-recording. I don’t personally use EFBs for logging flight time and generally recommend a dedicated logbook app for anyone pursuing professional aviation. Still, for recreational pilots, automated logging within the EFB makes sense.

8Flight offers two subscription tiers: Data and Aviator, with monthly or annual billing. The Data plan costs $4.99 per month when billed annually ($59.88 per year) or $5.99 per month billed monthly and covers core planning tools, weather, airport information, and fee data. The Aviator plan is billed annually at $7.50 per month ($90 per year) and unlocks the full feature set, including IFR functionality and filing.

A 30-day free trial is available, which provides enough time to evaluate whether the app fits your planning workflow. At this point, the pricing feels fair. The bigger question is whether the app works with the tools you already have and whether its workflow fits how you plan and fly. Switching EFBs is hard, and getting comfortable with a new one often feels like learning a new language. Cost matters, but workflow matters too.

A Garmin Pilot User Tries 8Flight

For years my EFB program of choice has been Garmin Pilot, for few other reasons than I like its relative resemblance to the Garmin GPS navigators that I’ve managed to fumble my fingers through over the years. I’m hardly a master, but I can generally program the Garmin stuff without anything terrible happening. I also get along with the app’s weather briefing and filing utility through Ledos. Garmin Pilot also has interface with the Garmin’s EIS engine indication system on my panel.

Through field reporting over the years, I’ve used ForeFlight, WingX, and FlyQ+, plus some other programs that didn’t survive, but I always end up back with Garmin Pilot—the cheap Italian in me swearing at the $209.98 U.S. Premium yearly subscription as I hit the Apple Pay button. I think in the end it’s worth the price premium over the $109.99 Standard sub because I’ve grown to like the Smart Charts that are only available in the Premium package. We’ll look at Garmin Pilot in a dedicated report, but for a taste of something new, I was anxious to join Sy Pinkert in giving 8Flight Aviator a try. For a primer, founder Matt Guthmiller offered an honest update on 8Flight’s development in this podcast.

And to field our ongoing feedback on the app’s features, capabilities, and shortcomings, Matt Guthmiller put us in the beta user pool—something I appreciate. I’ve long been involved with beta testing for app programs and other avionics systems, and it’s the only way for a developer to push an already decent product over the finish line. The beta version we’re in is 2.2 and includes features like synthetic vision, terrain layers and traffic alerting. I was onboard, but the aging iPad in my flight bag was not.

It’s a sixth-generation unit from 2018 running the latest iOS version, and with Garmin Pilot and 8Flight loaded on to its 128-GB capacity, there was roughly 96 GB remaining. The iPad’s only use (other than clipping to my music stand) is for preflight planning and occasional use in a VFR-only Van’s RV-12, and since I hate spending money on new Apple gear, I’m trying to squeeze all remaining life from it. But where it struggled (the 8Flight program hard-crashing) was during high-res map draws, especially with a busy weather overlay. Guthmiller (unapologetically rightfully pointing out that I’m using an old device) said my beta version 2.2 might help, and I’m still testing at press time. Still, I’ve committed to pony up $599 plus tax for a base-model iPad mini A17. That doesn’t exactly thrill me.

And after handing over the cash, I’d want to bring the 8Flight-loaded device to my cockpit and connect with the Garmin panel, but it can’t talk with anything Garmin—not even the Garmin GDL 52 portable ADS-B unit we keep in the airplane. That means no wireless flight plan transfer (to or from the avionics) or Garmin-linked weather and traffic overlay. Guthmiller said he hopes Garmin might open its architecture to 8Flight when it earns more users. At press time, 8Flight was finishing an interface with Avidyne navigators, the Dynon SkyView HDX suite, and the current Advanced Flight Systems suite, and 8Flight now works with any portable ADS-B device that has an open protocol—Appareo Stratus 3/4 units, Stratux, plus non-Garmin wireless ADS-B transponders.

My thoughts on third-party compatibility is this: With a potential ADS-B In equipage mandate on the doorstep, an open ADS-B architecture between hardware and software will be more important than ever. Even more so if maybe—just maybe—a force-fed equipage standard includes low-cost portable traffic receivers.

But hardware and compatibility challenges aside, I learned to like 8Flight for precisely why it was developed in the first place and that’s for trip planning. When traveling in our Rotax-powered airplane, we’re usually looking for Mogas when possible and definitely care about landing and facility fees. That’s why 8Flight exists, really. And since the winter weather has simply been miserable for flying where I’m based, the long-range weather planning utility is a big help—and so is the accurate turbulence depictions on the map. As a bonus, I think the airport and runway info is plentiful and easy to decipher at a glance thanks to color-coded text.

I’m with Sy on this one: 8Flight is well on its way to becoming a terrific app that can likely hold its own among the top players. I’d recommend it as one immediate solution for users new to EFBs, but for advanced users with a taste for the advanced features of ForeFlight and Garmin Pilot, to name two, it has some maturing to do.
—Larry Anglisano

Bottom Line

8Flight is clearly still in development, and it shows. There are some promising elements—fuel pricing, long-range weather visualization, and a modern design philosophy—but accuracy and feature depth still need work. At first, the data appeared solid after calling several airports, but discovering fee discrepancies by chance makes me cautious about fully trusting it today. Fuel prices, at least in my experience, appear reliable.

The app is exciting, but it’s early. There’s real promise here, and if the team can execute on its vision, 8Flight could become a compelling EFB. For now, it’s an app we’ll continue watching closely and reporting on—but for now it isn’t ready to replace my primary EFB yet.